


One of These Things is Not Like the Other

by VioletThePorama



Category: Sam & Max
Genre: Character with an unidentified disorder, Gen, Oneshot, Vague angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:31:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletThePorama/pseuds/VioletThePorama
Summary: A oneshot for Sam and Max week, day 2: headcanons.Aka more introspection from Sam because I can't get over this.





	One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Ever since Max had  _ blown himself up _ , and the other Max had turned up (like some sort of replacement goldfish…), things hadn’t been the same between them.

It wasn’t new, and it wasn’t old. Whatever was happening was familiar and foreign, mixed together in some confusing, paradoxical loop.

Often, Sam felt listless, like he was just going through the motions. He couldn’t mourn somebody who was still there, somebody who was still the same person as the one he’d lost. 

But Max wasn’t the same, and Sam couldn’t help but look for all the differences between the one he had known, and the one that came back to him. It was like his partner was gone, and in his place, a fake, imperfect copy. 

But Max wasn’t a copy. He was his own person (rabbity-lagomorph-thing), and Sam couldn’t help but feel a soul crushing guilt whenever his thoughts drifted in that direction. 

But still…

Sam had never been an expert on Max. Sure, he knew the lagomorph better than anybody else did, but a lot of the time, the way his little buddy worked was still a mystery to him.

The school they’d gone to in their youth had had the rabbit tested several times. Maybe they would have picked up on more things present day than they did back then, but all they had turned up with back then to explain his behavior had been depression (a seemingly laughable and improbable idea, up until one listened more closely to the comments Max made), and his hyperkinesis (which Sam was sure was just a symptom of something else). 

By and large, both Max’s seemed to have whatever it was that made them that way, and both held (most of) the same little tics and habits. Supposedly, due to this shared thing, they were the same. 

But Sam had noticed little tells that the (new) Max had, completely foriegn to the other one. 

Instead of waking Sam up when he couldn’t sleep, or when he woke up first, Max had a short time where he could distract himself. It was a short, minute amount of time, but the extra twenty minutes made a difference, and brought up several questions. 

It wasn’t that Max hadn’t ever found something to distract himself with in the mornings, for minutes or even hours at a time, but it was never quite so regular, and more often than not, the dog would be woken up at about the same time as his partner. (Max had once said that it was less boring that way).

The new Max would instead turn to the TV, watching anything that was on. (That was both a blessing and a curse, as Sam could sleep longer, but missed several of the shows they had been watching together.) And rather than violence at every instance, this Max would go for toys or hold something as he spoke with people. 

The violence of course still happened quite a bit. The lagomorph was quite violent by nature, and the change was hardly noticeable. Sam still dealt with bruises or fires from whatever Max thought was a funny joke that morning, or whenever the rabbit had a lapse in memory about something dangerous left out to stew. Somehow though, as nice as the mornings where Sam walked out to find his buddy upside down on the couch instead of hazardous gas in the kitchen seemed, it was still  _ wrong _ for there not to be something else in the works. 

The lagomorph also tended to stick a bit closer than the other did, not straying so far during cases and instead playing with (trying to eat) silly putty, or bouncing (losing and causing property damage with) a bouncy ball. He seemed overall a bit less twitchy with something to occupy his nervous energy, and a tad more focused. 

It was weird. They still fit together like a shoe. But instead of being an old, worn out and comfortable shoe, held together with love and a bit too much glue, they were brand new. They still fit, but they weren’t yet broken in. The tongue stuck out a bit too much, and the sole wasn’t broken in yet. 

Sam felt bad when he compared the two of them, but he couldn’t help it. Maybe, with time, he would come to terms with the other one, and the two partners would be as inseparable as before, but for the moment, he couldn’t get past the distinctions.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hi yes. Max most definitely has some kind of disorder going on (probably ADHD and something), and Sam most definitely has some issues that he needs help working through.


End file.
